It isn't illegal for educational purposes @Littlegoth. The school can show anything they want.

In all honesty, I think you need to unclench and stop sheltering your DC, OP. 99 % of 14 year olds will have watched 15 rated films without the world ending, and you're doing your DC no favours socially or intellectually by sheltering them.

It's not even like they're showing random comedies. The films being shown are educational and relevant to the courses being studies. Let it go.

The age restrictions don’t apply for educational purposes. When I was a media teacher, as a courtesy, I’d do a letter home to parents of new Year 10s to explain what they’d be watching on the course, but if I couldn’t show them the footage, they’d miss half the stuff they’d need for their exams!

As an English teacher now, my school is very pro the students watching play/film versions of the texts they study in class to support their learning. So they watch Of Mice and Men, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, etc etc. I’ve never checked the age rating on any of them, because they just absolutely need to see them in their entirety.

I really wouldn’t worry about it at secondary school. It’s such a small difference in age to the BBFC age rating, and with teenagers, it’s highly likely they’ll have seen worse stuff at home/on theirs or their mates phones anyway.

As I said, used to be a media teacher. Age ratings from the BBFC are not applicable in educational settings. We had the same discussion with parents every year, as we have to inform them that they must watch the content proscribed by the exam board, whatever the age restrictions.

I would not like that either. I think ratings have changed since I was a teenager too, so things that would have been 18 are now 15. I have been shocked by some of the stuff that is a 12, never mind a 15. Suffragette, for instance, is a 12. I am really strict on what my dds watch, my eldest is 14, and she has seen some 15 rated things, but only where the rating is for things like swearing, not violence . Kind, gently Detectorists, for example, is a 15, simply because of the occasional swear word. Dd was shown a CSE film at school depicting rape when she was 11 and was really upset and shocked.

I used to work in a secondary school and I agree with the above poster that is it common for students to watch these films as part of media studies. The school used to send a letter home to inform the parents about it.